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Three things universities can learn about leadership from Google

February 20, 2012 By 2 Comments
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The brightly colored Google logo, re-formed as a halo over the head of CEO Larry Page, caught my eye in an airport recently. Under Page’s picture, the cover of Fortune magazine promised a list of the 100 best workplaces, with Google at the head of the pack.

Is there any chance, any hope, any dream, that somewhere on that list, I might find a university?

To my disappointment, the promise on the cover of the 100 best “workplaces” was modified to “companies” on the inside of the magazine, and universities therefore weren’t even considered.

But what if they were? What would it take to get there? Is there anything we can learn from Google?

Filed Under: leadership, research, universities

New approaches to quality control in publishing

December 6, 2011 By 3 Comments

There are four key components to publishing, and they’re all about to change. Ten years from now, publishing will be done in ways that we are only beginning to envisage. Politics and profit will of course compel these changes. But the specific innovations coming our way will be driven by a generation of tweeters, bloggers, status [...]

Filed Under: open access, research, writing and presenting Tagged With: ,

Publishing in the Adjacent Possible

December 1, 2011 By 2 Comments

The link below takes you to a video of my talk at the 6th Munin Conference, at which the theme was Enhancing Publications. In the talk, I explore Stuart Kauffman’s concept of the Adjacent Possible and imagine what it might mean in the context of thinking about the future of scientific publication. A very slightly [...]

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Four crucial steps for hosting a successful write-in

November 15, 2011 By 4 Comments

Keep writing. Every day. That’s what the experts say. Maybe you just have time to write a single paragraph. Can you summarize what you wrote yesterday? Can you write a few notes about the next section in your project? Find your strategy and stick with it. Don’t succumb to Writer’s Block — but if you [...]

Filed Under: leadership, research, writing and presenting Tagged With: ,

Opacity in scientific publication: Do journals discriminate?

November 11, 2011 By 8 Comments

Watson & Crick’s 1953 article in Nature revealing the double-helix structure of DNA was not peer reviewed. Many scientists claim this paper presents the most important discovery of the 20th century. The peer review system is what gives science integrity. Yet this paper was published based on the evaluation of the editors that it was obviously true. [...]

Filed Under: open access, research, writing and presenting

Breakthrough knowledge: Research, education and universities

November 5, 2011 By 1 Comment

Discovering something no one knew before is research. Discovering something that you didn’t know before, but someone else did, is education. I love the idea of universities. I spend my days with people who work to understand something better: the universe, the world, societies, brains, kids, change, books, and more. That’s research. What do we [...]

Filed Under: leadership, research, universities, writing and presenting

The European Gender Summit

November 1, 2011 By 5 Comments

In less than a week, hundreds of men and women who care about the intersection of science, policy, and gender, will gather in Brussels for the first European Gender Summit. It’s a high-powered event, sponsored by the Polish Presidency of the Council of the European Union, the European Commission and many other partners. Why is [...]

Filed Under: gender equality, leadership, research

Negative results are important: Research Europe

July 21, 2011 By 4 Comments

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of the Four, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Research fails. Almost always. Scientists discard hypotheses like so many untried drones, cast out to freeze before even getting a chance. This is the nature of research. It’s the [...]

Filed Under: leadership, open access, research, writing and presenting

The science of teamwork

June 9, 2011 By 2 Comments

When PhD candidates at my university were recently asked if they were part of a research team, 6% of them answered “I don’t know.” But if they don’t know what they have, at least they know what they want. Our eager, young researchers want more collaboration, they want to be part of teams. They know isolation [...]

Filed Under: leadership, research

Arsenic gives aspiration: Twitter and Open Access Publishing

June 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Passionate researchers want to figure it out. We want to understand nature, to identify what is and why it is that way. We want to know. And when we know something, we want to tell others about it. But the way scientists communicate is outdated. The system is broken. And our attempts to fix it are [...]

Filed Under: open access, research, writing and presenting
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